


Can Roses Bloom In Winter?

by mystery_deer



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Background Shenanigans, Drunk John, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21665242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystery_deer/pseuds/mystery_deer
Summary: Watson realizes that he loves Sherlock Holmes and loathes to tell him this.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 57





	Can Roses Bloom In Winter?

John liked to think that he had a firm grasp on narrative symbolism. That he understood the importance and effect of even the smallest, most minute details. With that in mind he wished he had realized that he loved Sherlock Holmes during spring.

He thinks it would have been much easier to say it then. To take a walk arm in arm and let the confession be comforted by the budding pinks, yellows and greens of the season. As it was he was left staring out the largest window in Sherlock’s (and partly his when it suited him these days) apartment.

As usual it was partly obscured by some trinkets that had to be cast aside if safe. He carefully moved the many seemingly hand-painted toy soldiers to the very corner of the sill and leaned against the wood, sighing as he took in the dreary street below.

Now was no time for confessions or new beginnings he thought, pulling on his jacket and calling Lestrade. Now was the time for hunkering down and suffering things through.

“Whaddya mean you like Sherlock?” Lestrade exclaimed far too loudly in the small, dimly lit pub. This was a sort of suffering, John thought.

“What I said. No double meaning.” He turned to the bartender. “A whiskey double please.”  
“Really though? Sherlock?”  
“What’s wrong with that?” John asked, suddenly feeling defensive. He had gained the impression over the years of friendship with Sherlock that the man had had that very phrase flung at and about him regularly.

“Nothing!” Greg raised his hands in surrender before taking a thoughtful swig and giving the doctor a bright, teasing smile. “Mycroft’s gonna kill you.”

“He will not.”  
“He’s gonna stuff you and hang you from that creepy ass moose head in his office.” John shuddered, the image vivid in his mind. He could absolutely picture it.  
___________________________  
“Hello Mycroft.”  
“Hello.”  
“I intend to ask your brother to be my boyfriend.”  
“Ah, I see. Lovely knowing you.”  
And then bam, there he is draped artfully over the antlers of that moose head like an offering to some pagan deity.  
When Sherlock came to investigate his disappearance he would look disgruntled, “Another one, really?”  
___________________________  
He shook his head. No, no. If Mycroft did kill him he would make sure that Sherlock didn’t find out about it. And John himself would put up a hell of a fight, military background and all that (so stark a background that it nearly erased him at times). He’d fight to the bitter end for his love.

God he was so screwed. By everything, the universe. He didn’t know he was so prone to...sap. He always made fun of his mates who went on about their lovers in crooning, honeyed tones and now he was one of them.

“If he kills me the last thing I say is gonna be a word to word retelling of your drunken ramble about how you’d ‘Absolutely shag Sherlock’s brother if he were a little less terrifying and a little more busty.’” John said, downing the rest of his drink.

Lestrade’s eyes bulged with fear and he shook the other man hard enough that some other patrons eyed them. John smiled, unphased. The man didn’t know his own strength sometimes which he had learned fairly early on in their friendship.

“You’d doom me!?”  
“Oh yeah, absolutely. That’s what friends are for after all.” He said, laughing as the detective inspector groaned and ran his hands through his hair. They were both drunk and quickly grew unaware of anything else but the two of them and their light miseries.

When John finally stumbled back into 221B he found that Sherlock was back as he had replaced the toy soldiers exactly as they were that afternoon. He smiled and moved one slightly before going to prepare dinner. Something greasy absolutely, nothing he could do about that. It was what the people wanted, he thought and said out loud before realizing he had done so.

“Oh god I’m so drunk.” He laughed, pulling meat out of the freezer. “Greg’s gonna be fucked tomorrow.”

“Why?” Asked Sherlock, opening the door to their flat and stepping in. He wasn’t wearing his coat but donned a hat which made John assume that he had only gone out for a bit. Still, his duties as a doctor and friend overwhelmed him and he decided to gently voice his concern for the other man.

“Holmes what the fuck it’s freezing out there!”  
“Ah, you HAVE been around Inspector Lestrade.” Sherlock noted, amused. He hung up his hat and removed his shoes before gliding over to where John was continuing to cook. “Is there enough for me as well?”

“Always enough for you, John Watson doesn’t ever cook just one serving of anything.” John proclaimed proudly, grinning at Sherlock who returned it with a mischievous smile of his own. It felt like they were schoolboys, conspiring.

“That’s good, one serving of your food would never be enough.”  
“You always have just one!”  
“And it’s never enough.” John puzzled over this while Sherlock took the opportunity to sneak the frozen peas into a nearby kitchen drawer.

“I don’t get it.” His companion finally said, delivering the news with a finality that didn’t invite elaboration. Sherlock ignored this, straightening up and inching away from the drawer to be able to claim he couldn't have put anything in it.

“I was reading a book of poems once a few years back-”  
“For a case? Did someone, was someone writing mysterious murder notes in sonnet form?” John interrupted, adding the meat into what he had apparently decided was going to be a stew. He reached for the next ingredient and found only a slight dampness on the countertop.

“No, recreationally. A man I had recently became acquaintances with gifted it to me.” John felt his heart being tugged by something but in his state he couldn’t tell if it was sadness, jealousy or pre-heartburn.

“Do you still have it?” He asked, immediately regretting the question. Sherlock raised an eyebrow in that hawkish way he did and hummed without answering. God he was annoying, human beings shouldn’t be able to be that beautiful. He had to stop himself from becoming legitimately angry about Sherlock’s beauty. He was too drunk to have a conversation with the most beautiful sober man in England and possibly the world.

“In it there was a poem I especially liked. Equating kissing to love to water. There is never enough of any of them, the poet claimed. He could be kissed a thousand times by his lover and still crave more.”

Sherlock attributed the sudden reddish hue the doctor donned as a result of standing over and stirring the warm stew as he continued.

“I can’t understand that particular sentiment myself, I’m not prone to prolonged physical affection, but the second point about abstract and emotional love struck a chord in me.” He paused. “And it seemed in the man as well as he had heavily annotated that section.”

“The guy who gave it to you?”  
“Yes.”  
“What’d he say?”  
“A great many things, all inconsequential.”

Normally he would let the matter drop after asking twice and getting no reply but the combination of alcohol, hunger and heartbreak had gone straight to his head and emptied it of any common sense. He was all emotion and all his emotions were pointed directly at Sherlock who was staring at him strangely because, he realized, he was staring at HIM strangely.

“I-” He started, then stopped.

For some reason the image of Sherlock in spring entered his mind. Sherlock reading a book of poetry marked up by someone who wrote neatly in script and had the courage to actually tell the man how he felt. He thought of Sherlock’s words, inconsequential. His eyes burned.

“Fuck.” He said and then raced to the bathroom, holding himself over the toilet and proceeding to black out, the sound of Sherlock’s voice echoing softly to him from a distance of miles and miles and miles.

When he woke up he was in his bed, which was where he typically found himself so it took him a moment to register why he felt slightly uneasy. Then it all came back to him in the form of a headache and a fierce growling stomach.

For a moment he lay in bed with his eyes still closed, wondering if it were possible he could go back to sleep and die but eventually he sighed and got up, slowly making his way to the door. Before he could open it however the door was opened for him and in place of it was Sherlock, wide eyed and obviously having missed the night’s sleep.

“Oh good you’re awake!” He exclaimed, far too loud for John’s liking (that is to say he wasn’t using sign language or otherwise miming). “I’m very glad to see it!”

“Mhm.” John groaned, less in agreement and more in pain. He wished he were blind and deaf. He wished he could shush all of London. “Hungover.”

“Ah, yes! Yes…” Sherlock said, quickly lowering his voice. “Terribly sorry, it’s been awhile since I’ve...here, here come…”

Powerless (physically and emotionally) to resist the other man’s enthusiasm, John allowed himself to be dragged into the living room and sat down onto the couch where he immediately decided that lying down would be the best course of action. Sherlock gently bent down and arranged his head so that it was cushioned by a pillow and pressed a warm mug of tea into his hands.

“Hm? Oh…” He felt his heart ache with love for the detective who was looking at him with equal parts curiosity and concern, as if he was waiting for something to happen and unsure of how he would like the result. John tried to smile, wanting to put him at ease.

“Thank you, really.” He said sincerely before drinking the tea. It was heavenly to his dry throat.

“It’s fennel, supposed to help with nausea and the like.”  
“Let’s hope.”

Sherlock laughed, covering his mouth to stay quiet and John couldn’t do it anymore.

“Sherlock.” The other man winced, obviously thinking that he had been too loud.  
“I’m sorry.” John shook his head and regretted it, splitting headache. Right.

“Sherlock I…” This was not the time. He was sick and hungover and every part of him hurt and he hadn’t prepared at all and it outside snow was falling hurriedly, the kind that stuck to the ground and piled up and the wind came into their apartment through a crack somewhere and made it seem semi-haunted and he had just got black out drunk and thrown up in front of him there was absolutely no way he was going to say-

“I love you.”

John’s mouth hung open as he for a moment thought that his tongue might have spoken for him, independent of his will, out of impatience with him. Saying ‘fine I’ll do the work for both of us!’ but then he saw it.

Sherlock, face pink and hands pressed together in nervousness. It was him, he realized. It was him who had said it.

And now he was taking too long to answer and there it was, the tilt of the head to avoid eye contact and his face was trending towards red and it was beautiful and oh god there he went his mouth was opening.

“You look beautiful.” He said, and then “What about inconsequential?”

Sherlock tilted his head back upright, obviously having no idea what John was going on about. His lips twitched at the compliment though and it made John want to break into song. He had said it! He had said it!

“The man.” He elaborated. “The one who gave you that book of poetry? You said that he was inconsequential.”

“No.” Sherlock corrected, his hands rearranging themselves into a sort of steeple. “I said that the words he wrote were inconsequential because I did not return his feelings and he was a rather miserable poet.”

John laughed and then groaned as everything hurt again and Sherlock chuckled, taking his free hand and holding it in his own.

“You, John Watson are not inconsequential.” He could die, he thought. He could die right now and die the happiest man in London.

“I love you too.” He said, leaning back and placing his mug on the floor. “I didn’t say it before, sorry.”

“That’s quite alright.”  
“And I’m sorry I threw up.”  
“That’s alright too.”  
“And I’m sorry I called Mycroft and told him I was gonna marry you.”  
“You didn’t do that.”

John smiled softly and closed his eyes, letting himself drift. “Oh right, that was a dream.”

And so in the dead of winter with winds howling and snow falling and not a stitch of color in sight- John slept within the walls of 221B with Sherlock’s hand in his. Both of them feeling the other’s heart beat through skin and bone. Connected, intertwined, one. And love bloomed between them so strong that John thought sure as anything he could smell the scent of spring roses from the flame.


End file.
